Explaining Second Life today as a MMORG or a social media platform undersells things for the unfamiliar; Second Life became an entirely alternative online world for its users. And it wasn’t just the likes of Reuters and U2 and Sweden embracing this platform. Second Life boasted 1.1 million active users at its peak roughly a decade ago.

For active Second Life users, perhaps the key passage is Linden Lab asserting that Second Life's fate isn't tied to Sansar's success (or failure):

[SL user Karsten] Rutledge also expressed concern that Sansar is taking resources away from Second Life, but [Linden Lab’s VP of Product, Bjorn] Laurin suggested such user concerns couldn’t be further from the truth. “My team has actually been growing on the product side in Second Life,” he says. Still, [LL spokesperson Peter] Grey did caveat his comments on Second Life’s profitability by saying Linden Lab is “making significant investment as we develop Sansar.”

Laurin insists Sansar is not intended as an eventual replacement for Second Life. “I’m actually in charge of the roadmaps here and I have no plans,” he said. “As long as I can plan, I’m planning years ahead for anything to happen, it’s going to be two platforms—two great platforms.”

In some ways, that mirrors what the community is saying. Whether they like Sansar or not, they all agree it’s no replacement for Second Life. “I don't know that Project Sansar will ever be a true Second Life successor; they're different projects with different goals,” Rutledge says. “I think talking about Sansar in that way is misleading.”

If VR headset sales continue to be slow, I can even see a scenario where Linden Lab ends up selling Sansar and reinvesting the proceeds into a revived Second Life.

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If I recall correctly, years ago there was a guy in SL doing numerous "Live Concert" events, using actual audio from actual concert films and albums. He claimed at the time that he had a right to use the material because he had been a roadie or a sound guy or something. I always wondered if he would ever eventually get a C&D or two from someone's 800LB gorilla, because what he was doing was obviously a major copyright and trademark violation.

Sansar won't be sellable until it shows it can turn a profit...in the meantime, Linden Labs could put too much investment into Sansar, which, if and when Sansar fails, could put all of Linden Labs products at risk of closure, since they haven't been able to attract buyers for Second Life or Linden Labs, itself, let alone a would-be-at-that-time, failed product, like Sansar. As several companies/investors have shown they would rather build an all-new platform than be saddled with Second Life. It's now all on Linden Labs to pull off this risky endeavor and make it succeed, despite it's more recent history in such things.

A rich company could buy Sansar even if it isn't profitable, just to grab some asset, tech and patents, and then close it. Yahoo did that with Cloud Party.
That would be a preferable scenario for LL, rather to just fail and lose the investment.
Either a radical change happens, or it's likely that Sansar isn't going to be profitable, given the current setup. To be profitable, Sansar would need an userbase many times wider than SL. On the other hand, Sansar hardware and network requirements go in the opposite direction, shrinking the possible users to a tinier slice (5-10 Mbps download speed would be ok at the current average speeds, but in fact it takes up to an half hour to download a scene, this is among the fist things users notice. You need much more than the average). All this while VR mass adoption is still a guess.

Of course being the first one on the scene is a plus. The problem with Sansar is that there is a good chance it have missed that plus. Instead of taking Unity or Unreal and focusing on features, LL took time in developing their own 3D engine. Having more control on it has advantages, but it took resources and time. Meanwhile the big guys stepped in and the competitors are no longer just indie devs and startups. Now LL has to offer (to users and maybe buyers) an underdeveloped Sansar, while facing Microsoft, Facebook, etc.
They may still have a chance, but its getting paler and paler.